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Hizballah Protests Anti-Islam Video, U.S. Free-Speech 'Pretext'
The gathering follows an appeal to take such action by the leader of Hizballah in Lebanon, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Nasrallah accused Washington, which denies any involvement with the low-budget film, of using the pretext of freedom of speech to justify the continued availability of the film online.
U.S. officials have condemned the film but noted that offensive speech is protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The cast of the film, "Innocence of Muslims," has issued a letter saying their work was misrepresented by the filmmaker, who is thought to be a Coptic Christian of Egyptian descent with a criminal record who lives in California.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour told Reuters he had called Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Araby to ask him to organize an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers to discuss the film.
Days of anti-American violence provoked by the amateurish video have put Western embassies across the Muslim world on high alert.
Months after it was posted on the web, an extended trailer for the film was said to have been dubbed into Arabic by an Egyptian cleric and railed against in early September.
The September 11 storming of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the deaths of four Americans including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, took place against a backdrop of protest against the film.
At least four other people have died in connection with protests in more than 20 countries over the trailer, which depicts Muhammad as a lecherous cheat.
U.S. authorities have questioned the purported filmmaker over whether he might have violated the conditions of his punishment for a financial scam by using the Internet to post or otherwise propagate the film.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP
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Zelenskiy Signs Miliary Aid Pact With Dutch PM, Discusses Speeding Up Delivery Of F-16s
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed gratitude to the Netherlands on March 1 for a new package of aid signed during a visit to Kharkiv by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
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Zelenskiy put the value of the arms pact at 2 billion euros ($2.17 billion) for the current year. The package was part of a security agreement signed by Rutte and Zelenskiy. It is the sixth agreement of this kind between Ukraine and a Western state.
Zelenskiy also said in a video address that the Netherlands would help secure the skies over Ukraine with its participation in the coalition of states supplying Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets as he and Rutte agreed to speed up the process of supplying Ukraine with the planes.
"Regarding the F-16: we are on schedule. This means that they will be in the Ukrainian sky later this year, but there is still a lot to be done," Rutte said at a joint press conference with Zelenskiy.
Rutte said he and Zelenskiy discussed the possibility of accelerating the transfer of the F-16s.
"So we will ask our defense ministries to work on this together with our partners like Norway, Belgium, and other countries that are part of the F-16 coalition because Ukraine needs this advantage in the air as quickly as possible," he said.
The Danish Defense Ministry reported earlier that Denmark will transfer F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine in the summer of 2024.
The ministry noted that it is difficult to establish a clear schedule for the transfer of the fighter jets because there are several conditions that must be met in order for Ukraine to be able to use them.
Denmark and the Netherlands became the first countries to promise to transfer F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, but it will only happen after Ukrainian pilots are trained to fly them.
Rutte's trip included joining Zelenskiy in visiting wounded Ukrainian soldiers at a hospital in Kharkiv. The two leaders also visited an underground classroom where schoolchildren attend classes safe from missile strikes.
The visit to Kharkiv was a rare one by a senior Western politician as the city is regularly attacked by Russian air strikes and is much closer to the Russian border than Kyiv.
"The task facing Ukrainian allies is clear -- do whatever you can to provide what is needed, as long as it takes," Rutte said.
With reporting by dpa and Reuters
Record Low Turnout Reported In Iranian Elections Amid Widespread Dissatisfaction
The turnout in Iran's two March 1 elections that are expected to usher in a new parliament appears to be at a record low, according to unofficial accounts, amid voter indifference toward what many see as "engineered" balloting with Iran's theocracy scrambling to mend its legitimacy.
The elections for a new parliament, or Majlis, and a new Assembly of Experts, which elects Iran's supreme leader, were the first since the deadly nationwide protests that erupted following the September 2022 death while in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for an alleged Islamic dress-code violation.
Iran's rulers needed a high turnout to repair their legitimacy following the unrest, but many Iranians said they would not vote in "meaningless" elections in which more than 15,000 candidates were running for the 290-seat parliament.
Partial results are not expected before March 2, but state media reported that the turnout was "good." Official surveys before the election, however, suggested that only some 41 percent of eligible Iranians would come out to vote.
The Hamshahri online newspaper said March 2 that more than 25 million people, or 41 percent of eligible voters, had turned out, thus confirming the official survey.
If the figure is confirmed, it will be the lowest election turnout in Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that brought the current theocracy to power, despite officials twice extending voting hours to allow late-comers to cast ballots.
So far, the lowest turnout, 42.5 percent, was registered in the February 2020 parliamentary elections, while in 2016, the turnout was some 62 percent.
As the voting concluded, the United States made clear that the international community was aware that the results of the poll would not reflect the will of the Iranian people.
"As some Iranians vote today in their first parliamentary election since the regime's latest violent crackdown, the world knows the Iranian people do not have a true say at the ballot box," U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Iran Abram Paley wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Ahead of the vote, prominent figures, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, said they would boycott the elections, labeling them as superficial and predetermined.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, voiced his refusal to vote, criticizing the Supreme Leader's indifference to the country's crises.
Voter apathy, along with general dissatisfaction over living standards and a clampdown on basic human rights in Iran, has been growing for years.
Even before Amini's death, which sparked massive protests and the Women, Life, Freedom movement, unrest had rattled Iran for months in response to declining living standards, wage arrears, and a lack of insurance support.
In a last-ditch effort to encourage a high turnout, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said after casting his ballot in Tehran that voting would "make friends happy and ill-wishers unhappy."
While domestically attention is mostly focused on the parliamentary elections, it is perhaps the Assembly of Experts polls that are more significant.
The 88-seat assembly, whose members are elected for eight-year terms, is tasked with appointing the next supreme leader. Given that Khamenei is 84, the next assembly may end up having to name his successor.
Analysts and activists said the elections were "engineered" because only candidates vetted and approved by the Guardian Council were allowed to run. The council is made up of six clerics and six jurists who are all appointed directly and indirectly by Khamenei.
In dozens of audio and written messages sent to RFE/RL's Radio Farda from inside Iran, many said they were opting against voting because the elections were "meaningless" and likely to consolidate the hard-liners' grip on power.
State television provided wall-to-wall coverage of the elections from across the country as news outlets linked to the establishment tried to generate excitement on banned social media platforms -- including Telegram, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) – by posting videos with catchy captions.
Prominent Iranians abroad and civil and political activists in the country had called for a boycott of the voting.
Activists and opposition groups posted statements on social media arguing that a high turnout would legitimize the Islamic republic.
In the run-up to the elections, authorities arrested several people for allegedly calling for a boycott.
With reporting by Reuters
Russian Drones Strike 3 Ukrainian Regions, Killing At Least 2, Officials Say
Russia launched a wave of drone strikes early on March 2 on three Ukrainian regions -- Odesa, Mykolayiv, and Kharkiv -- killing at least two people, wounding several others, and causing material damage, regional officials said. The Black Sea port city of Odesa sustained the most serious attack, with drones striking a high-rise residential building, regional governor Oleh Kiper and Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov said. Two people were killed and seven were wounded, they added. Trukhanov said on Telegram that there may still be people under the rubble and that several residents are unaccounted for. To read the original stories by RFE/RL's Ukranian Service, click here and here.
People Keep Paying Their Respects At Navalny's Grave Despite Police Presence And Arrests
People continued to come and pay their respects on March 2 at the grave of Aleksei Navalny, who was buried in Moscow on March 1 following his suspicious death in an Arctic prison last month, despite a high police presence at the cemetery and the arrest of more than 120 people across Russia for taking part in rallies to honor the memory of the late opposition politician.
Navalny was laid to rest in a cemetery near his childhood home in Moscow as tens of thousands of supporters defiantly risked reprisals from the authorities as police kept them from joining in the services.
Lithuania-based Russian journalist Aleksandr Plyushchev reposted on his Telegram channel a message from a a woman who visited the Borisovskye cemetery in the morning of March 2 and said security forces were still at the cemetery in high numbers while iron fences installed the previous day ahead of the funeral procession were still there.
The woman said "lots of flowers are still being brought, and people keep coming," and posted several photos showing Navalny's grave covered by fresh flowers and wreaths. The woman mentioned that security forces did not rush people, allowing them to spend as much time as they wanted at the cemetery.
Alla Abrosimova, the mother of Navalny's wife, Yulia, visited her son-in-law's grave again on March 2, together with Navalny's mother. A photo of the two mothers was posted on Telegram.
Abrosimova on March 1 posted a video in which she delivered a speech at Navalny's grave.
"Yulia called me 10 times today. 'Tell him [Aleksei Navalny] directly that I love him immensely. Although you don't have to talk, because he knows it very well.' And you know, somewhere he is happy, because not everyone gets to love and be loved like that," Abrosimova said in the video.
Yulia Navalnaya, who lives outside Russia for security reasons, did not attend the service. But she posted an emotional letter and video on Instagram paying tribute to her husband, saying he made her laugh, even when he was imprisoned.
"I don't know how to live without you, but I will try my best to make you up there happy for me and proud of me. I don't know if I'll manage it or not, but I will try," she said, alluding to her pledge to continue her husband's work to bring democracy and freedom to Russia.
Relatives and close associates were allowed to be present at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God for a brief funeral ceremony for President Vladimir Putin's most prominent foe before the burial in nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery.
Police forces were out in large numbers across Russia, and although no immediate incidents were reported during the funeral ceremony, more than 120 people were later detained in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, and other Russian cities for participating in rallies in Navalny's memory.
In Novosibirsk, police detained at least 18 people, according to Coalition Novosibirsk 2020 and Sibirmedia.
In Moscow, according to the Avtozak Telegram channel, at least 17 people were detained.
Among those detained in Moscow were Mikhail Shneider, former deputy head of the opposition People's Freedom party, or PARNAS, which was shut down by authorities in May, and Andrei Morev, the deputy head of the Moscow branch of the Yabloko party, and his colleague Alexander Efimov. Morev was later released without any official registration of his arrest.
Meanwhile, the First Department human rights project reported that courts in four Russian regions have declared Navalny's name an "extremist symbol."
First Department reported that the designation was used against three participants in rallies in Navalny's memory in the Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar, and Murmansk regions. The designation was reportedly used in the Ulyanovsk region, too.
During the funeral procession on March 1, many people threw flowers at the hearse carrying the coffin to the cemetery as some mourners broke down metal fences to get closer to the vehicle. Chants like "Russia will be free," "No to war," and "Putin is a murderer," could be heard from the crowds.
The U.S. ambassador to Moscow and several other Western diplomats attended the funeral.
"Aleksei Navalny's work was dedicated to sharing a vision of a better future for Russia and all Russians. And ultimately, he gave his life for his patriotic service. For many Russians, he remains a symbol of what Russia could and should be," the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a post on Telegram.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hailed both Navalny's memory and the courage of those who attended his funeral in a message on X, formerly Twitter.
"It took a lot of courage to go pay tribute to Aleksei Navalny. Thousands of Russians found it within themselves. This is his legacy. Memory eternal," Macron wrote.
Scholz wrote that "Aleksei Navalny paid for his fight for democracy and freedom with his life."
"After his death, courageous Russians are carrying on his legacy: Many of them were at the funeral today and took a big risk -- for freedom," he added.
Navalny's death was announced on February 16 at the Polar Wolf prison colony in the Russian Arctic, where he was serving a 19-year term on extremism and other charges that he and his supporters had rejected as politically motivated.
Authorities claimed his sudden death was prompted by "natural causes" and then refused to release his body to his family for about a week.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement or responsibility for Navalny's death.
With reporting by SOTA, Mediazona, Baza, and Mozhem Obyasnit
- By Reuters
Russian 'Disinformation' Hyped Paris Bedbug Scare, French Deputy Minister Says
A bedbug scare in Paris last year that made headlines across the globe was artificially amplified by social media accounts linked to Russian "disinformation" activities, a French minister said on March 1. "The bedbug polemic was in a very large part amplified by accounts linked to the Kremlin," French European Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told TF1 television. After social media users published videos of the insects crawling around on public transportation, officials called on the government to help stamp out the bugs. A deep inspection was carried out, but authorities said there was no trace of any unusual outbreak.
Wanted Former Wirecard Executive Spied For Russia For Years, Investigative Journalists Say
The former chief operating officer of the defunct German fintech giant Wirecard, who fled to Russia in 2020 to evade possible prosecution on embezzlement and fraud charges, spied for Moscow for years, according to an investigation by German, Austrian, and Russian media outlets published on March 1.
Among the findings of the investigative article by journalists with ZDF, the German magazine Spiegel, the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, and The Insider is that Jan Marsalek, the shady central figure in the implosion of the German digital-payment-services provider, changed his identity while in Russia.
The journalists obtained a copy of Marsalek's current Russian passport in which he is identified as Konstantin Bayazov. The reporters found out that a man with that name is an Orthodox priest residing in the Russian city of Lipetsk southeast of Moscow. The priest resembles Marsalek, and their birthdates are only one year apart.
Marsalek appears to have assumed Bayazov's identity to be able to travel, the investigative journalists reported. The priest said he had no comment on their findings.
"I have told you that you journalists must understand that we cannot speak with you," Bayazov told ZDF.
The investigation also uncovered details about Marsalek's Russian friend Natalia Zlobina, who in 2014 introduced him to Stanislav Petlinsky, who ultimately helped Marsalek establish contacts with representatives of Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU).
Zlobina, a former erotic model who is identified in the investigation as his lover, had been "attached" to Marsalek and assigned to recruit him to collaborate with Russian secret services.
Petlinsky, who calls himself "a security consultant," told the journalists while meeting with them in Dubai that he had introduced Marsalek to "some influential persons in Russia" up to the level of lawmakers, but not to secret service employees and he denied that Marsalek worked for the Russian secret services.
Petlinsky met with Marsalek in his office in Munich opposite the Russian consulate, where Marsalek regularly met with influential people active in politics, business, and national security officials, the investigation reports.
Meanwhile, some security officials in the West say they have information about Petlinsky's cooperation with Russian secret services.
Petlinsky confirmed to the investigative journalists that in 2017 he and Marsalek visited Wagner mercenary group troops in Syria and took part in recruiting Russian mercenaries for military operations in Libya.
The investigation said it was very likely that Marsalek, while representing Wirecard, used a network of firms to buy out assets of Russia's RSB Group, a provider of services to military mercenaries across the world.
Austrian investigators say Marsalek was part of a secret services' cell providing them business opportunities and authority.
"The intensive investigations...substantiate the suspicion and point to an intelligence network that is well established in Austria...around the Austrian citizen Jan Marsalek, who is still a fugitive," a report by the Austrian special investigator said.
In addition, British authorities say Marsalek led a Russian spy network in London that followed individuals the Kremlin did not like, including Christo Grozev of the Bellingcat investigative group, which investigated Marsalek's activities.
Marsalek's lawyer refused to comment on the situation to the investigative journalists.
Wirecard, a company that was once listed in Germany's DAX index of top-tier companies, plunged into crisis in 2020 when auditors pointed to a massive 1.9 billion-euro ($2.06 billion) hole in its accounts, sending the once high-flying company into insolvency.
Marsalek is wanted by German and Austrian authorities on suspicion of embezzlement and fraud.
Since the collapse of Wirecard, interest in Marsalek has expanded beyond his role in Wirecard to include his other business and political interests.
The Financial Times reported in July that Marsalek was a person of interest to at least three Western intelligence agencies over his association with individuals or networks linked to Russia's GRU.
With reporting by ZDF, Der Spiegel, Standards, and The Insider
Kasparov Says Russia May Shed Some Territories If It Loses War In Ukraine
Self-exiled Russian opposition politician and co-founder of the Free Russia Forum Garry Kasparov told RFE/RL in an interview on March 1 that Russia's current borders may "not necessarily remain" if Moscow loses the war in Ukraine but stressed that a total dissolution of Russia is unlikely.
Among possible regions Kasparov said might separate from the Russian Federation are the republics of Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Daghestan, and Chechnya, but he added he doesn't believe everything is clear about what will come after the war.
"At the end of the day economic factors will play a major role in that matter. But it is very important today not to support the position of a united and indivisible Russia," Kasparov said, adding that he believes "the change of Russia's imperial character is necessary for its reformatting."
The 60-year-old former world chess champion said the losses to Russia would be "minimal" but said, "If you reject an empire, then you have to agree that some of its parts can go away in the end."
The bonds that would make it hard for Russia to dissolve would be mostly economic ties, he said. But if some parts of Russia seceded, it would then become possible to reach new agreements between Russia's territories under what would be a "free confederation."
"It is right, among other things, from a psychological point of view because it will be impossible to build a nonimperial Russia while preserving imperial misconceptions," Kasparov said, speaking with RFE/RL in Vilnius at a gathering of Russian opposition figures.
Kasparov also said he believes the United States and the European Union are "afraid" of possible dissolution of Russia if it loses the war in Ukraine.
This creates problems in West's better understanding of the world and the war in Ukraine and affects the West's support of Kyiv's efforts to stand against Russia's full-scale aggression.
A Ukrainian victory would be a "mighty blow" to Russia, he said, and would "most likely lead to the change of [its] entire political structure."
Kasparov has said the Russian public does not yet understand that the war is heading toward defeat and that "Putin's dictatorship will not survive."
Kasparov, who currently resides in the United States, is known as a staunch critic of the Kremlin's policies, including the war in Ukraine. He and another prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil tycoon, were added to Russia's registry of foreign agents in May 2022.
The Vilnius meeting was the 12th session of the Free Russia Forum.
With reporting by Andrei Grigoryev of RFE/RL's Idel.Realities
Siberian Activist Arrested On Sexual Abuse Charge Now Accused Of Violation Of Foreign Agent Law
The Telegram channel Kuzbass bez ekstremizma, which is linked to police in Russia's Kemerovo region, said on March 1 that local activist Sergei Piskunov, who was arrested last month on a charge of sexual abuse, is now also accused of violating the law on so-called foreign agents. Piskunov was labeled a foreign agent in 2021. Investigators say Piskunov failed to mark his public materials as created by a foreign agent. Piskunov used to coordinate activities of the Golos (Voice) movement that monitored elections in Kemerovo. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Siberia.Realities, click here.
Iranian Grammy Winner Sentenced To Prison, Writing Anti-U.S. Music
An Iranian court has sentenced Grammy winner Shervin Hajipour, who was first detained after his song Baraye turned into an anthem of anti-establishment protests in 2022, to nearly four years in prison while also forcing him to write music critical of the United States.
Hajipour shared the news along with a picture of the court verdict on his Instagram account on March 1. He thanked his lawyers for "trying their best" and used a Persian expression that suggested he had no regrets.
Hajipour has been handed eight months in prison for "propaganda against the establishment" and three years for "encouraging and provoking the public to riot to disrupt national security." Hajipour will serve only the longer of the two prison sentences.
The singer and songwriter has also been ordered to "create music about America's crimes against humanity" and "document America's human rights violations in the last century" and publish his findings on social media.
He has also been banned from leaving Iran for two years and ordered, among other things, to publish on social media handwritten notes from religious books about women.
Baraye, whose lyrics were heavily inspired by social media posts from Iranians explaining why they were protesting, won the inaugural Special Merit Award for Best Song For Social Change at the 2023 Grammys.
The protests in 2022 erupted after Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for allegedly wearing "inappropriate" attire, died in police custody. The monthslong unrest gave birth to the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement and presented one of the strongest challenges to the Islamic republic since its inception.
Hundreds were killed and thousands were arrested as the authorities cracked down on the protests.
Hajipour was arrested in September 2022 and held for about three weeks before being released on bail.
- By RFE/RL
Iranian Media Says IRGC Commander Killed In Suspected Israeli Strike On Syria
An Iranian commander was among three people killed in a suspected Israeli air strike on Syria, Iranian state media reported on March 1.
Reza Zare'i, a "military adviser" with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGC), was killed following strikes on the Syrian coastal city of Banyas, the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reported. It said he was a member of the IRGC Navy.
Earlier, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights said the strikes came at dawn and targeted a villa, killing an Iranian commander and two companions who were not Syrian.
The IRGC has not commented on the reported death of one of its commanders. Iran refers to its troops in Syria as "military advisers."
At least 11 members of the IRGC, including an Afghan fighter with the Fatemiyun Brigade, have been killed in suspected Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon since the outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip in October.
Israel launched a deadly offensive against the Palestinian enclave in response to a multipronged attack by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and European Union. Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the Hamas attack inside Israel, while more than 250 were taken hostage and brought back to Gaza.
Iran has supported the assault by Hamas but denied it was involved in planning it. U.S. intelligence has indicated that Iranian leaders were surprised by the attack.
Iran's regional allies have been targeting Israeli and U.S. interests in the Middle East following Israel's attack on Gaza. However, armed groups backed by have scaled back their attacks on American bases following a series of U.S. strikes last month, according to the New York Times.
Iran stepped in to defend President Bashar al-Assad in 2013 when his rule was challenged during the Syrian civil war. Hundreds of IRGC commanders and officers and believed to be present in Syria, where Tehran has also built up a large network of militias, consisting mostly of Afghans and Pakistanis.
Austria Refuses Asylum To Karakalpak Activist, Deports Him To Poland
Karakalpak activist Koshkarbai Toremuratov has said he was deported by Austria to Poland after Vienna refused to grant him political asylum.
Nazgul Seitbek of the Vienna-based Freedom for Eurasia group said on March 1 that Toremuratov, an Uzbek citizen, was currently in immigration detention at the Warsaw airport, where he applied for asylum.
However, another Karakalpak activist, Nauryzbai Menlibaev, told RFE/RL that Polish authorities ordered Toremuratov to leave the country within 30 days.
Seitbek said human rights lawyers were currently working to provide Toremuratov with legal assistance.
The 48-year-old Toremuratov, a leader of the Karakalpak diaspora in Kazakhstan, went to Poland last fall to take part in a conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), where he emphasized what he called the "discrimination" against Karakalpaks in his native Autonomous Republic of Karakalpakstan, which is part of Uzbekistan.
Toremuratov then travelled to Austria, where he applied for political asylum. In mid-February, he was officially informed that his request for asylum in Austria had been rejected.
Before travelling to Europe, Toremuratov spent one year in a detention center in Kazakhstan after he was detained at Uzbekistan's request. Uzbek officials accuse Toremuratov of "posing a threat to Uzbekistan's constitutional order," which Toremuratov and his supporters reject as politically motivated.
Although he was released last fall, Toremuratov says he might be detained in Kazakhstan again and extradited to Uzbekistan, where he says he will face arbitrary arrest and persecution for his activities defending the rights of Karakalpaks.
Toremuratov is one of several Karakalpak activists who spent as much as a year in detention in Kazakhstan after they were arrested at Uzbekistan's request but then later released.
Last month, another Karakalpak activist, Aqylbek Muratov (aka Muratbai), who has resided in Kazakhstan for 10 years, was arrested in Kazakhstan at Uzbekistan's request.
The arrests of Karakalpak activists in Kazakhstan were linked to mass rallies in the region's capital, Nukus, in July 2022. Thousands protested against Tashkent's plans to change the constitution that would have undermined the republic's right to self-determination.
The protests were violently dispersed. Uzbek authorities said at the time that 21 people died during the protests, but the Freedom for Eurasia group said at least 70 people were killed during the unrest.
Last year, an Uzbek court sentenced dozens of Karakalpak activists to lengthy prison terms on charges including undermining the constitutional order for taking part in the protests.
The violence forced Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev to make a rare about-face and scrap the proposal.
Karakalpaks are a Central Asian Turkic-speaking people. Their region used to be an autonomous area within Kazakhstan before becoming autonomous within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1930 and then part of Uzbekistan in 1936.
Russian Prosecutor Seeks 8 Years For Journalist Over Ukraine War Coverage
A prosecutor asked a court in the city of Korolyov near Moscow on March 1 to convict and sentence journalist Roman Ivanov to eight years in prison on a charge of distributing false information about Russia's military. The charge stems from Romanov's online coverage of the Kremlin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Romanov pleaded not guilty, saying he was carrying out his journalistic work. In February 2023, a court in Siberia sentenced another RusNews journalist, Maria Ponomarenko, to six years in prison on the same charge, which she also rejected, saying journalism was not a crime. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.
- By RFE/RL
Australia Slaps Sanctions On 3 More Russian Officials Linked To Navalny's Death
The Australian government has announced targeted sanctions against three unnamed Russian prison officials linked to the Arctic prison where opposition leader Aleksei Navalny died on February 16. The sanctions, announced in a statement on March 1, the day of Navalny's funeral, follow punitive measures against seven other officials involved in his mistreatment in another prison before he was transferred to the "Polar Wolf" prison camp in the remote northern Yamalo-Nenets region. "Australia holds President [Vladimir] Putin and the Russian government responsible for Mr. Navalny's treatment and death in prison," the statement said.
Russia-China 5G, Satellite Cooperation Poses Risk For Ukraine, Report Warns
Russia is increasing its cooperation with China in 5G and satellite technology and this could facilitate Moscow's military aggression against Ukraine, a report by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) security think tank warns.
The report, published on March 1, says that although battlefield integration of 5G networks may face domestic hurdles in Russia, infrastructure for Chinese aid to Russian satellite systems already exists and can "facilitate Russian military action in Ukraine."
China, which maintains close ties with Moscow, has refused to condemn Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and offered economic support to Russia that has helped the Kremlin survive waves of sweeping Western sanctions.
Beijing has said that it does not sell lethal weapons to Russia for its war against Ukraine, but Western governments have repeatedly accused China of aiding in the flow of technology to Russia's war effort despite Western sanctions.
The RUSI report details how the cooperation between Russia and China in 5G and satellite technology can also help Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine.
"Extensive deployment of drones and advanced telecommunications equipment have been crucial on all fronts in Ukraine, from intelligence collection to air-strike campaigns," the report says.
"These technologies, though critical, require steady connectivity and geospatial support, making cooperation with China a potential solution to Moscow's desire for a military breakthrough."
According to the report, 5G network development has gained particular significance in Russo-Chinese strategic relations in recent years, resulting in a sequence of agreements between Chinese technology giant Huawei and Russian companies MTS and Beeline, both under sanctions by Canada for being linked to Russia's military-industrial complex.
5G is a technology standard for cellular networks, which allows a higher speed of data transfer than its predecessor, 4G. According to the RUSI's report, 5G "has the potential to reshape the battlefield" through enhanced tracking of military objects, faster transferring and real-time processing of large sensor datasets and enhanced communications.
These are "precisely the features that could render Russo-Chinese 5G cooperation extremely useful in a wartime context -- and therefore create a heightened risk for Ukraine," the report adds.
Although the report says that there are currently "operational and institutional constraints" to Russia's battlefield integration of 5G technology, it has advantages which make it an "appealing priority" for Moscow, Jack Crawford, a research analyst at RUSI and one of the authors of the report, said.
"As Russia continues to seek battlefield advantages over Ukraine, recent improvements in 5G against jamming technologies make 5G communications -- both on the ground and with aerial weapons and vehicles -- an even more appealing priority," Crawford told RFE/RL in an e-mailed response.
Satellite technology, however, is already the focus of the collaboration between China and Russia, the report says, pointing to recent major developments in the collaboration between the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS and its Chinese equivalent, Beidou.
In 2018, Russia and China agreed on the joint application of GLONASS/Beidou and in 2022 decided to build three Russian monitoring stations in China and three Chinese stations in Russia -- in the city of Obninsk, about 100 kilometers southwest of Moscow, the Siberian city of Irkutsk, and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia's Far East.
Satellite technology can collect imagery, weather and terrain data, improve logistics management, track troop movements, and enhance precision in the identification and elimination of ground targets.
According to the report, GLONASS has already enabled Russian missile and drone strikes in Ukraine through satellite correction and supported communications between Russian troops.
The anticipated construction of Beidou's Obninsk monitoring station, the closest of the three Chinese stations to Ukraine, would allow Russia to increasingly leverage satellite cooperation with China against Ukraine, the report warns.
In 2022, the Russian company Racurs, which provides software solutions for photogrammetry, GIS, and remote sensing, signed satellite data-sharing agreements with two Chinese companies. The deals were aimed at replacing contracts with Western satellite companies that suspended data supply in Russia following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The two companies -- HEAD Aerospace and Spacety -- are both under sanctions by the United States for supplying satellite imagery of locations in Ukraine to entities affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group.
"For the time being, we cannot trace how exactly these shared data have informed specific decisions on the front line," Roman Kolodii, a security expert at Charles University in Prague and one of the authors of the report, told RFE/RL.
"However, since Racurs is a partner of the Russian Ministry of Defense, it is highly likely that such data might end up strengthening Russia's geospatial capabilities in the military domain, too."
"Ultimately, such dynamic interactions with Chinese companies may improve Russian military logistics, reconnaissance capabilities, geospatial intelligence, and drone deployment in Ukraine," the report says.
The report comes as Western governments are stepping up efforts to counter Russia's attempt to evade sanctions imposed as a response to its military aggression against Ukraine.
On February 23, on the eve of the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, the United States imposed sanctions on nearly 100 entities that are helping Russia evade trade sanctions and "providing backdoor support for Russia's war machine."
The list includes Chinese companies, accused of supporting "Russia's military-industrial base."
With reporting by Merhat Sharpizhanov
Kazakh Activist Reportedly Beaten After Giving Out Details Of Journalist's Trial
Kazakh activist Abzal Dostiyarov's wife, Dana Sarsenbai, said on March 1 that police in Almaty's Auezov district detained her husband for unknown reasons and beat him at a police station. Dostiyarov managed to use his mobile phone to live broadcast his interrogation by several police officers as he asked for the reasons for his detainment and beating. The Auezov district police department refused to comment on the situation. Dostiyarov recently distributed information about the ongoing trial of independent journalist Duman Mukhammedkarim in the city of Qonaev. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Kazakh Service, click here.
- By AFP
Pakistani Parliament Elects Speaker As Khan's Supporters Protest
Pakistan's new parliament elected a speaker on March 1 despite protests from lawmakers loyal to jailed ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan three weeks after an election they claim was brazenly rigged. Sardar Ayaz Sadiq of the military-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party was elected by parliamentarians from his party and a handful of others in a coalition pact shutting Khan's followers out of power. The 336-seat National Assembly convened on February 29 for the first time since Pakistan's February 8 elections, and the alliance is slated to vote in PML-N's Shehbaz Sharif as prime minister on March 3.
Navalny Buried In Moscow As Tens Of Thousands Risk Arrest To Say Farewell
Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison under mysterious circumstances, was laid to rest in a cemetery near his childhood home in Moscow as tens of thousands of supporters defiantly risked reprisal from the authorities as police kept them from joining in the services.
Relatives and close associates were allowed to be present at the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God for a brief funeral ceremony for President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic on March 1 before the burial at the nearby Borisovskoye Cemetery.
Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said the music from the final scene of the film Terminator 2 -- Navalny's favorite movie -- was played at the funeral, as was Frank Sinatra's song My Way.
Photos of Navalny's open casket appeared on social media. They showed his mother and father sitting near the casket, a carpet of red and white roses covering Navalny's body from the shoulders down. Dozens of others, including clergy members, stood behind.
The coffin was then carried out of the church and loaded into a hearse. Many people threw flowers at the vehicle as it drove to the cemetery. Some mourners broke down metal fences to get closer to the vehicle but there were no signs of clashes with police amid the chants "Russia will be free," "No to war," and "Putin is a murderer."
Thousands made the 2.4-kilometer trip to the cemetery, where some were allowed to see the burial site after Navalny's coffin had been lowered into the ground.
The U.S. ambassador to Moscow and several other Western diplomats attended the funeral.
"Aleksei Navalny's work was dedicated to sharing a vision of a better future for Russia and all Russians. And ultimately, he gave his life for his patriotic service. For many Russians, he remains a symbol of what Russia could and should be," the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said in a post on Telegram.
Ivan Zhdanov, a self-exiled associate of Navalny wrote his tribute on X, formerly Twitter.
"Goodbye my friend. 4.6.1976 – 16.2.2024 Killed by Putin," Zhdanov said.
Ahead of the service, people chanted Navalny's name as lines snaking through the streets around the church grew from dozens, to hundreds, to thousands, to tens of thousands. When his body arrived at the church, the chants stopped for several minutes as the crowd began to applaud.
After Navalny's casket was driven away, some vented their anger toward Putin, whom Navalny's widow and many Western countries -- including the United States -- have blamed for the Kremlin critic's death.
"You were not afraid, and we are not afraid," Navalny's team said in a post on Telegram that was echoed by some in the crowd.
Navalny's widow, Yulia, who lives outside of Russia for security reasons, did not attend the service. But she posted an emotional letter and video on Instagram paying tribute to her husband, saying he made her laugh, even when he was imprisoned.
"I don't know how to live without you, but I will try my best to make you up there happy for me and proud of me. I don't know if I'll manage it or not, but I will try," she said, alluding to her pledge to continue her husband's work to bring democracy and freedom to Russia.
"The burial today is not marking an end. It marks the fact that nothing ended, it is a continuation of something that the Kremlin understands is not just an ordinary farewell," self-exiled Russian politician Leonid Gozman told Current Time.
Gozman said Navalny's death could be compared to that of U.S. civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr. in that their legacies and impact would live on and fuel the fight for civil rights.
Ahead of the ceremony, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued a warning through reporters during a conference call that any unsanctioned gatherings in support of Navalny would be considered as violations of the law.
He also said the Kremlin had no assessment of Navalny as a politician and nothing to say to Navalny's family.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement or responsibility for Navalny's death.
More than 67 people were detained at rallies in memory of Navalny in 16 cities, according to the human rights portal OVD-Info.
In Novosibirsk, police detained at least 18 people, according to Coalition Novosibirsk 2020 and Sibirmedia. Among those detained were an independent City Council deputy and an assistant to another independent deputy.
In Tomsk, police cordoned off the monument to the repressed -- the Stone of Sorrow. Journalists and people who brought flowers to the monument were taken away by the police, who then removed the flowers.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron were among the world leaders who commented on the courage of the Russians who attended Navalny's funeral.
"Aleksei Navalny paid for his fight for democracy and freedom with his life," Scholz wrote on X.
"After his death, courageous Russians are carrying on his legacy: Many of them were at the funeral today and took a big risk -- for freedom."
Macron said: "It took a lot of courage to go pay tribute to Aleksei Navalny. Thousands of Russians found it within themselves.
This is his legacy."
With reporting by SOTA, Mediazona, Baza, and Mozhem Obyasnit
Ukraine Shoots Down 4 Russian Drones; 4 Russian Villages Without Power After Attack
Ukrainian air-defense forces shot down four Russian drones over the regions of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk early on March 1, the military said, without specifying how many drones Moscow had launched at Ukraine's territory. Meanwhile, Roman Starovoit, the governor of Russia's border region of Kursk, said a Ukrainian drone attack left four villages in his region without electricity on March 1. Russia's Defense Ministry previously said that its air defenses downed four Ukrainian drones over the Belgorod and Nizhny Novogorod regions. Ukraine has not commented on the Russian claim. To read the original stories by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, click here and here.
Turnout Becomes Focus Of 'Engineered' Iranian Elections Amid Widespread Dissatisfaction
Iranians voted on March 1 in two elections that will usher in a new parliament and Assembly of Experts as opinion polls projected a low turnout amid calls for a boycott of what many see as "engineered" balloting.
Voting began at 8 a.m. local time in the first election since the deadly nationwide protests that erupted following the September 2022 death while in police custody of Mahsa Amini. She had been detained for allegedly not following Iran's hijab laws.
Iran's rulers need a high turnout to repair their legitimacy following the unrest, but many Iranians said they would not vote in "meaningless" elections in which more than 15,000 candidates were running for the 290-seat parliament. Partial results are not expected before March 2.
Prominent figures, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, have said they would boycott the elections, labeling them as superficial and predetermined. Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, has voiced his refusal to vote, criticizing the supreme leader's indifference to the country's crises.
The state-linked polling agency ISPA, which ordinarily releases frequent polling data ahead of elections, put out its first and only survey results on February 28. It found that only 38.5 percent of respondents said they would "definitely" turn up to vote and projected turnout of 41 percent on election day.
Another poll by the state broadcaster IRIB, which was released on February 29, projected a 43.1 percent turnout.
Turnout was "good," state media reported, but witnesses who spoke with Reuters said voting at most polling centers in Tehran and several other cities was light. Officials twice extended voting hours to allow late-comers to cast ballots.
Voter apathy, fueled by general dissatisfaction over living standards and a clampdown on basic human rights in Iran, has been growing for years.
Even before Amini's death, which sparked massive protests and the Women, Life, Freedom movement, unrest had rattled Iran for months in response to declining living standards, wage arrears, and a lack of welfare support.
In the last parliamentary elections in February 2020, ISPA predicted a 52 percent turnout, but actual participation was 42.57 percent --- a historic low for legislative elections since the Islamic republic came to power in 1979.
In a last-ditch effort to encourage a high turnout, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said after casting his ballot in Tehran that voting would "make the friends happy and ill-wishers disappointed."
While domestically the attention is mostly on the parliamentary elections, it is perhaps the Assembly of Experts polls that are more significant. The 88-seat assembly, whose members are elected for eight-year terms, is tasked with appointing the next supreme leader. Given that Khamenei is 84, the next assembly may end up having to name his successor.
Analysts and activists said the elections were "engineered" because only candidates vetted and approved by the Guardians Council are allowed to run. The council is made up of six clerics and six jurists who are all appointed directly and indirectly by Khamenei.
In dozens of audio and written messages sent to RFE/RL's Radio Farda from inside Iran, many said they were opting against voting because the elections were "meaningless" and likely to consolidate the hard-liners' grip on power.
State television has been providing wall-to-wall coverage of the elections from across the country. News outlets linked to the establishment tried to generate excitement on banned social media platforms -- including Telegram, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) – by posting videos with catchy captions.
As has become the norm, some outlets, including the IRIB-run Young Journalists' Club, have posted videos and images of women in polling stations dressed in attire that on a normal day would likely earn them a warning or even detention.
Activists and opposition groups post statements on social media arguing that a high turnout would legitimize the Islamic republic.
In the run-up to the elections, authorities arrested several people for allegedly calling for a boycott.
With reporting by Reuters
- By RFE/RL
Balkan Leaders Pledged To Supply Ukraine With Ammunition, Zelenskiy Says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on February 29 that his meetings with Western Balkan leaders at a summit in Tirana will help Ukrainian troops get more of the artillery shells they badly need to fend off advancing Russian forces.
Zelenskiy said his forces will receive more artillery under new defense agreements he reached during the two-day summit hosted by Albania.
"We use every meeting and every day to provide more capabilities to our warriors," he said in his nightly video address. "We had good talks in Albania – as always principled support and not only in terms of our bilateral relations but also in terms of how to make the dialogue with those states that are still reserved in their support more meaningful."
Zelenskiy added that the participants of the summit will take part in a global peace summit that has been proposed to be held in Switzerland in the coming months to discuss his vision for peace.
"It's planned to be held in Switzerland and we already see opportunities for broad representation of countries from around the world," Zelenskiy said.
Russia has already rejected the idea.
Zelenskiy, who also mentioned his visit to Saudi Arabia prior to the Tirana summit, said 2024 should be a time of maximum pragmatism in relations with Ukraine's neighbors.
"Everyone sees that Russia is not going to stop," he said.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.
Russian forces are pushing against more Ukrainian towns and villages in eastern and southeastern Ukraine, hitting some Ukrainian defensive positions hard by deploying overwhelming amounts of artillery and troops.
The Russian Army currently is trying to seize Tonenke, Orlivka, Semenivka, Berdychi, and Krasnohorivka in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine's army chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said on social media.
Ukrainian military officials said earlier that Ukraine would form a new line of defense in those areas after Ukrainian troops pulled out of Avdiyivka on February 17.
In the southeastern Zaporizhzhya region, Russian forces are focusing on retaking Verbove and Robotyne, towns that Ukraine won back last summer, Syrskiy said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said that its forces shot down three Russian Su-34 jets overnight. That makes a total of 11 warplanes that Ukraine claims to have downed since February 17.
"The enemy has increased its air presence in the east. Our top military leadership reacted accordingly," air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on national television.
The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces also said on February 29 that 19 Russian soldiers were killed and 12 wounded in a missile strike on a group of Russian troops in Olenivka in the Russian-occupied part of the Donetsk region.
According to the statement, a deputy commander of a Russian military unit was among those killed, while the unit's commander was among the wounded. The statement has not been confirmed by Russia's military.
With reporting by AP
Former Bosnian Serb Soldier Sentenced To 6 Years For Wartime Rape Of Bosniak Woman
SARAJEVO -- A court in Bosnia-Herzegovina on February 29 sentenced a former member of the Bosnian Serb military to six years in prison for the rape of a Bosniak woman in the spring of 1992 shortly after war broke out in the country.
The long-overdue judgment in Sarajevo against Rade Grujic, 57, came in one of the few cases in which a member of the Bosnian military has been prosecuted for rape, despite tens of thousands of suspected cases.
Judge Tanja Curovic said that the court established beyond a reasonable doubt that in May 1992 Grujic entered a house in the village of Liplje in eastern Bosnia where Bosniak civilians were staying, took the victim into a room, ordered her to undress, and raped her.
In addition to the six-year sentence, Curovic ordered Grujic to pay the victim $5,400 and ordered him to be held in custody until the verdict becomes final. Grujic has the right to appeal the first-instance verdict.
Prosecutor Eldina Biuk said that the victim, whose name was withheld by the court, "clearly, unambiguously, and in detail" described what happened in Liplje.
The prosecutor said the victim knew Grujic because he was her neighbor, and she identified him in photographs presented during the trial and also pointed to him in the courtroom, identifying him as the man who raped her.
The prosecution called a total of 22 witnesses, including an expert witness, and submitted 60 material pieces of evidence.
Grujic's trial began in April 2023 after he was arrested in Liplje. The case is one of hundreds of war crimes cases in Bosnia, but one of the few prosecutions for rape during wartime, which falls under the category crime against humanity in Bosnia.
The court took into account the cruelty of the crime and the psychological consequences for the victim in determining the sentence, but it also considered the fact that the defendant was 25 at the time he committed the crime, has had no previous convictions, and is the father of two.
During the Bosnian War, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 50,000 women, girls, and men were raped. Many of them never received proper medical and psychological care and financial support.
Bosnia does not have a state law to support victims of war, including those who have suffered sexual violence.
A war crimes court in Belgrade in 2010 convicted several Serbs of committing crimes in Zvornik, a city near Liplje, and the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia previously convicted Bosnian Serb political and army leaders of war crimes in the Zvornik municipality.
With reporting by Balkan Insight
- By Reuters
Russian Who Smuggled Military Technology Pleads Guilty In U.S. Court
A Russian man pled guilty on February 29 to U.S. charges that he smuggled large quantities of American-made, military-grade microelectronics to Russia, U.S. justice officials said in a statement. Maksim Marchenko, 51, was arrested in September. He and two other Russians were accused of using shell companies to conceal the fraudulent procurement of microelectronics. Marchenko pled guilty in a New York court to one count of money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, and one count of smuggling goods from the United States, which carries a maximum 10 years. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 6.
Imam Acquitted Of Insulting Bosnian Serb Entity
A court in the Bosnian Serb entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina on February 29 acquitted imam Muharem Stulanovic of the charge of "harming the reputation and honor of the Republika Srpska and its peoples."
Stulanovic was charged with the crime after he called Republika Srpska a "genocidal creation" in January 2023 during a religious ceremony at the Faculty of Islamic Pedagogy in Bihac, where he is a professor.
The decision of the court in Banja Luka follows a ruling by the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which last month declared the charge unconstitutional.
"A persecution that should not have happened has ended," Stulanovic told RFE/RL after the trial.
Stulanovic's lawyer, Dusko Tomic, said the verdict was a victory for both the Constitutional Court and Bosnia.
"It has been confirmed once again that the judiciary respects the decisions of the Constitutional Court," Tomic said.
But Tomic also asserted that Republika Srpska's Prosecutor-General's Office did not comply with the decision of the Constitutional Court by failing to drop the charge against Stulanovic before the trial even started on January 10.
The case against him is the first confirmed indictment by the Prosecutor-General's Office of a person for calling Republika Srpska a "genocidal creation."
Stulanovic was charged based on Entity Criminal Code changes by Republika Srpska's assembly in July 2021 after amendments to the State Criminal Code imposed by then-High Representative Valentin Inzko prohibiting the denial of genocide and other war crimes, as well as the glorification of war criminals.
There was heightened interest in the trial after the decision of the Constitutional Court ruling last month and after Republika Srpska last year adopted a law saying the decisions of the Constitutional Court would not be enforced in the territory of the entity.
Ethnic Serbs in Republika Srpska have for years resisted Bosnia's central authorities, and the entity's assembly voted in June to suspend recognition of any decisions by Bosnia's multiethnic Constitutional Court.
Christian Schmidt, the international community's current high representative in Bosnia, annulled that law in July, a move that has been rejected by Republika Srpska, as were other decisions by Schmidt.
Iran Cracks Down On Calls For Election Boycott
Several people have been detained in Iran for allegedly calling for a boycott of parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections scheduled for March 1.
A young woman was arrested on February 28 for "opposing electoral participation" in Tehran's Valiasr Square during an event called "Free Tribune," witnesses told RFE/RL's Radio Farda.
They said the woman estimated to be in her 20s protested in front of a state television camera, symbolically removing her head scarf while declaring, "Vote or no vote, we will not vote."
A street vendor, who claimed to have witnessed the event, said the woman was quickly surrounded and subsequently detained by several security personnel after she waved her scarf over her head in protest.
Other eyewitness accounts detailed the intervention of two female officers, who covered the young woman with a chador cloak, while five male officers forcibly escorted her to a van.
The woman, described as having dyed, long hair and a slim build, was reportedly shouting for the officers to release her. Security forces present at the scene issued warnings to bystanders not to film the arrest and to disperse.
Elections for the parliament, the Majlis, are scheduled for March 1 along with voting to fill the Assembly of Experts, with a majority of would-be candidates already disqualified.
Many Iranians have said they will not vote in what they said will be "meaningless" elections that are likely to consolidate the power of the country's hard-liners.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Iran's elections could not be considered free and fair.
"I suspect that a great number of Iranians have no expectation that those elections will be free and fair," Miller told reporters at the State Department on February 29.
"As you probably already know, thousands of candidates were already disqualified in an opaque process and the world has long known that Iran's political system features undemocratic and nontransparent administrative, judicial, and electoral systems."
In the lead-up to the election, "Free Tribunes" have been organized by student groups in Tehran, where sentiment against the elections has spilled out.
Similar events have taken place -- in public and online -- in several areas of the country.
In the West Azerbaijan Province, police chief Rahim Jahanbakhsh announced the arrest of 50 people responsible for managing social-media pages that authorities say incited public unrest and discouraged election participation.
The arrests, Jahanbakhsh noted, were conducted in coordination with judicial authorities, though the identities of those detained remain undisclosed.
Jahanbakhsh also warned that publishing any content deemed provocative on social media would be considered a criminal offense.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has tried to push the importance of high voter turnout in the elections after more than a year of unrest that had boosted growing skepticism over the efficacy of participating in the electoral process.
Independent polling on electoral participation is restricted in Iran, with government-conducted surveys rarely made public.
However, a leaked poll from a state-affiliated center suggested a mere 30 perecnt of voters may turn out for the upcoming elections, a figure that was swiftly retracted from publication. In the previous parliamentary elections in 2020, voter turnout was reported at a historic low of approximately 42.6 percent.
Prominent figures, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, have said openly they will boycott the elections, calling them superficial and predetermined. Similarly, Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, has voiced his refusal to vote, criticizing the supreme leader's indifference to the country's crises.
The elections also mark the first balloting since the widespread "Women, Life, Freedom" protests, ignited by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini while in custody of the morality police. The protests led to a heavy-handed response from the government, including widespread arrests and crackdowns on demonstrators. At least 500 protesters were killed.
Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda
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Jeannette York Merrilees, age 83, died on Oct. 14, 2013. She was a resident of Laguna Beach since 1973.
Jeannette was born (Jeannette Faas York) on March 18, 1930, in Newark, N.Y., the second child of Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Whittier York. Her father died when she was still an infant. Jeannette was raised by her widowed mother, who never remarried, worked and sacrificed to provide her children with opportunities she never had, and provided the role model as a strong, capable woman for Jeannette.
Jeannette attended Smith College, majoring in government and religion where she was influenced by the non-violent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and got involved in politics for the first time. Her religious upbringing and graduate studies helped develop a strong social conscience. She spent a summer teaching school in a remote Alaskan native village. After graduating from Smith in 1952, she attended McCormick Seminary in Chicago to study religion. She was awarded a teaching fellowship from the Ford Foundation that credentialed her to teach elementary school in La Jolla, Calif., and at the San Felipe Pueblo in New Mexico.
After her children were grown, she graduated from the Western States School of Law, passed the California State Bar and practiced law.
Merrilees' passion was protecting the public interest. In the city of Orange, she worked with renowned urban planner Dr. Arthur Gallion to improve the general plan, and remind civic leaders of the need for public open spaces. She was one of the first advocates for creating a parks commission for the city of Orange.
After moving to Laguna Beach in 1973, she worked with Helen Pines to save a portion of Crescent Bay Point from development and establish a public park that continues to be a popular local destination. When a luxury resort was planned for Crystal Cove State Beach in 1991, she was the first to advocate for preservation of the beachside cottages as vacation rentals. When it was proposed that the cottages be restored for use by foundations and special groups, she fought to maximize their use for the vacationing public, as they are successfully used today. Never shy about opposing powerful interests, she was a tireless advocate for public coastal access, the preservation of the Laguna greenbelt, and was a strong opponent of the coastal Toll Road (but you can't win them all). Whether it was for the fields in Orange, the rustic cottages at Crystal Cove, or the point of land at Crescent Bay, if there were an opportunity for public enjoyment of natural resources, she banded with others to protect them.
Her passion for public advocacy was passed down to all three of her children. Craig advocates for workers rights with the Longshoreman's Union in San Francisco, Neil advocates for parks as a member of the San Mateo County Parks Commission, and Alison shapes public policy as legislative staff in the California State Assembly.
Merrilees loved and was fiercely supportive of her children and grandchildren, and she adored her husband Ed. She worked to leave the world a better place than she found it, and we will remember her when we visit the parks and open spaces she helped preserve.
Merrilees is survived by her husband of more than 59 years, Edward of Laguna Beach; her brother Edwin York (Marguerite) of Milford, N.J.; three children, Craig Merrilees (Diana Cohn) of Sausalito, Neil Merrilees (Jennifer) of Half Moon Bay and Alison Merrilees (Michael Paiva) of Sacramento; as well as four grandchildren Jenna and Annika Merrilees, Andrew and Abigail Paiva.

subset: commoncrawl


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Girls Ruffle Skirt Print - On the Green
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text:
By Karen D'Souza
For The San Jose Mercury News
"The quandary of our little lives is at the center of all of Wilder's plays. That's what make his pieces timeless, even in our future-obsessed society. Even his short pieces ache with the epic struggles of being alive."
Long before the stage manager invited us to visit the folks in Grover's Corners in the iconic "Our Town," he narrated the journey of the Kirby clan in "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden."
The omniscient figure is one of the many pleasures of "Wilder Times," a celebration of the work of Thornton Wilder, also beloved for "The Skin of Our Teeth" and "The Matchmaker." A collection of four short plays from the great American writer, "Wilder Times" explores such quintessential themes as the restlessness of the American spirit, the resilience of the common man and the irrepressible joy of youth.
For the record, it's also a homecoming of sorts; Wilder spent some of his childhood in Berkeley and graduated from Berkeley High School, where he once had a play performed at school assembly.
Barbara Oliver directs these one-acts with great finesse at the Aurora Theatre Company, where it will run through Dec. 9. While the first two of these pieces are charmers, they are relatively lighthearted, shot through with the homespun observations that make Wilder seem like a souvenir from a bygone era.
In "Infancy," (1962) two babies (Brian Trybom and Patrick Russell) have great insights into the world, while adults behave like children. In "Childhood," (1962) three siblings disenchanted with their parents pretend they are orphans. The ensemble, which includes notable actors Stacy Ross, Soren Oliver and Heather Gordon, leapfrog from one role to another with wit and agility, which highlights Wilder's embrace of unconventional techniques.
Scenery is almost unnecessary, and props minimal. The focus is on the text, the way words alone can transport us and move us.
Since his plays are so steeped in quaintness and Americana, it's easy to forget that Pulitzer winner bravely experimented with the boundaries of the form. His ambitions shine through in "The Happy Journey," (1931) in which the stage manager launches a family on a trip to see a relative. The car stops for a funeral procession and a snack before reaching its destination. The children (Gordon and Russell) joke and tease, the redoubtable mother (Ross) gets offended, and everyone makes up.
Under the veneer of the mundane, Wilder suggests the tragedies that shake a family to its core. They are on their way to visit a daughter (a nuanced turn by Marcia Pizzo) who has just lost a baby. Their older son was recently killed in the war. But it's clear that there is no stopping the Kirby family, that no matter what fate sends their way, they will endure.
It's in the centerpiece of the evening, "The Long Christmas Dinner," (1931) that the playwright's shattering insights into the human condition can be most keenly heard. As in "Our Town," Wilder can condense the triumphs and travails of a lifetime into a few short minutes.
Ninety years rush past for the Bayard family as the whirligig of time brings in its revenges. The new house becomes the old family manse. A schoolboy bounds into the room one minute. The next, he's a frail old man.
With his signature economy of dialogue and stage directions, the playwright summons up the life cycle in a few sage observations in between the turkey and the stuffing. Capturing both the idiosyncratic nature of personality and the universality of aging, Wilder sees the truths of existence with heartbreaking clarity.
Oliver's crisp direction and the nimbleness of the cast beautifully frame "The Long Christmas Dinner." The always illuminating Ross morphs from a dying old woman in one scene to a bright-eyed little girl in the next. The nurse brings in babies through one door while the elderly wander beyond our ken through another. Every entrance and exit indicates the end of an era.
In this deeply stirring piece, we see the impermanence of life thrust up against the monotony of routine. The quandary of our little lives is at the center of all of Wilder's plays. That's what make his pieces timeless, even in our future-obsessed society. Even his short pieces ache with the epic struggles of being alive.
As he put it, his work "is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life."


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Free Expression, Open Internet
TPP Negotiations Renew Concerns About Lack of Balance in Copyright Trade Agreements
1. TPP Negotiations and the Proposed I.P. Chapter
2. Exporting U.S. Law, Selectively
3. The Role of Intermediaries
4. Transparency
1. TPP Negotiations and the Proposed I.P. Chapter
Since 2008, the United States has been negotiating a multilateral free trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, and Brunei. TPP is expected to include a lengthy chapter on intellectual property rights and enforcement. No official working text has been made public, but a leaked U.S. proposal from earlier this year highlights the risk that the I.P. provisions may fail to reflect an appropriate balance that takes account of the variety of interests at stake in copyright policy. The risks are exacerbated by the lack of transparency in the negotiations, as it is unclear whether the full range of interested parties will have an opportunity to review and comment on proposals before they are finalized.
Intellectual property rules and their enforcement are certainly a suitable topic for international agreements. In addition to establishing some baseline elements for countries' legal frameworks, as a variety of instruments including TRIPS and the WIPO Copyright and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaties have already done, there is an important role for promoting mutual cooperation in law enforcement. Infringement often involves cross-border activity, especially in the online context. To surmount jurisdictional obstacles to intellectual property enforcement, international cooperation will be essential. The recently negotiated (but not yet approved) Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) contained a number of provisions aimed at cross-border assistance and coordination.
Cooperation among law enforcement authorities, however, is not what the United States proposes for TPP's I.P. chapter. Rather, the draft text calls for signatories to adopt numerous specific provisions based on the existing U.S. legal framework, including major portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This approach, and indeed most of the text of the U.S. proposal, is drawn from the I.P. Chapter of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), which has been pending since 2007 but which Congress has indicated it may bring to a vote when it reconvenes this September.
U.S. law and the DMCA can provide a useful international model in many respects. Nonetheless, the U.S. proposal for the TPP's I.P. chapter raises several serious concerns:
- Lack of Balance: Most important for CDT, the text would export U.S. law on a selective basis. It seeks to require adoption of key U.S. copyright enforcement provisions, but in some cases omits core limiting principles that are established features of the U.S. framework. The end result could be to invite other countries to adopt a skewed and far less balanced version of the U.S. framework they purport to emulate.
- Role of Intermediaries: The text calls for "legal incentives" for Internet intermediaries to cooperate with rightsholders on copyright enforcement. There may be some opportunities for useful cooperation among private parties, but there are strong policy reasons to avoid pushing ISPs and other online service providers into new network policing roles.
- Insufficient Transparency: The text addresses fundamental copyright questions such as the scope and duration of protection. Such substantive questions of copyright law should be subject to open and transparent discussion, so that the full range of impacts can be carefully considered. ACTA was able to strike a much better balance once negotiators publicly released a draft text that enabled broader input. TPP negotiators have not yet done that.
The countries negotiating TPP had hoped to finalize the text of an agreement by the time of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in November 2011. More recent reports suggest that this goal will not be met, and that negotiators now hope simply to have a full outline of the agreement by that date. Regardless of the precise timing, it will be essential that an official draft of any I.P. chapter be made public in time to allow meaningful public scrutiny and input.
Leaked February 2011 U.S. proposal for TPP I.P. chapter
2. Exporting U.S. Law, Selectively
The text of the United States' proposed I.P. chapter for TPP, following the I.P. chapter included in the 2007 KORUS FTA, includes many provisions that track U.S. law at a fine level of detail. In many cases, however, the text omits U.S. legal provisions or principles that serve as limits or safeguards on the assertion and enforcement of copyright.
The most glaring example concerns limitations and exceptions to copyright, especially fair use. The U.S. copyright regime couples strong enforcement provisions with significant exceptions that limit copyright's reach. Fair use is particularly important to achieving a proper balance. But the proposed TPP text, for all its detailed inclusion of other U.S. statutory provisions on copyright, contains only a bracketed placeholder for a provision on limitations and exceptions. The I.P. chapter of the KORUS FTA, meanwhile, mentions in a footnote that parties may adopt limitations and exceptions such as fair use, so long as such exceptions are confined to special cases. Thus, exceptions and limitations are permitted but in no way encouraged or required – in contrast to the agreement's many mandatory provisions aimed at strengthening copyright rights and enforcement.
There are a number of other examples. The U.S. proposal says that copyright protection shall extend to "temporary storage in electronic form," but omits key language from the U.S. statute that limits protection to copies that are fixed "for a period of more than transitory duration." Based on this limitation, the 2008 Cablevision case held that ephemeral buffer copies made in the course of streaming digital files did not count as copies that could give rise to infringement. By expressly covering "temporary copies" but omitting any reference to the "transitory duration," limitation, the proposed TPP text arguably invites other countries to treat buffering as actionable reproduction – a result that would give copyright holders a chokehold over digital services devices of all kinds, since buffering is ubiquitous in the digital world.
The proposed text's section on technological protection measures (TPMs) states that circumventing a TPM shall be a completely separate offense from any underlying copyright infringement. While this is consistent with the DMCA – violating the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions constitutes an independent offense, not a copyright violation – U.S. court decisions have generally held that the anticircumvention provisions apply only where the TPM in question is intended to protect a copyright interest. Omitting that limitation would open the door to the same kind of attempted abuses of the anticircumvention provision that were seen in the United States: using TPMs to try to block competition in replacement printer cartridges and garage door openers, to cite two prominent examples. Such abuses could well succeed in other countries, under the framework laid out in the TPP proposal.
Given that the United States is home to a large number of innovative technology companies and users that routinely rely on limitations and exceptions to copyright law, U.S. negotiators should work carefully to ensure that trade agreements on copyright reflect an appropriate balance. Requiring other countries to adopt tough copyright provisions in great detail, while making the corresponding safeguards and limitations merely optional or not mentioning them at all, could result in those countries adopting regimes that are far more skewed and one-sided than the U.S. regime they purport to emulate. Such legal regimes could cater strongly to rights holders at the cost of discouraging a wide range of legitimate speech, commerce, and technology innovation – including the international business activities of U.S. information technology companies. TPP's I.P. chapter should demand a more balanced approach.
2010 CDT Policy Post on lack of balance in earlier ACTA draft
2007 CDT blog post on economic role of fair use
2007 law professor amicus brief in Cablevision DVR case, explaining "buffer copy" issue
It is longstanding U.S. policy that Internet intermediaries such as ISPs, user-generated content websites, and hosting services generally are not liable for content created by their users. In recent years, however, the role of intermediaries with respect to infringing or otherwise improper user behavior has been the subject of contentious debate. Some countries, particularly France, have moved in the controversial direction of requiring ISPs to take a much more active role in policing user behavior. By contrast, the United States has preferred to quietly encourage private discussions aimed at finding areas for voluntary cooperation, such as the recent agreement between large ISPs and copyright owners on a system of escalating alerts for suspected peer-to-peer infringers.
The proposed U.S. TPP text provides intermediaries with a "safe harbor" from liability that closely follows the DMCA and its notice-and-takedown provisions. But the text also wades right into the debate on new roles for intermediaries, by copying KORUS FTA language that would require countries to provide "legal incentives for service providers to cooperate with copyright owners in deterring the unauthorized storage and transmission of copyrighted materials." The demand for "legal incentives" could be interpreted by many countries as an endorsement or even a requirement for new laws regarding intermediary behavior. It also goes significantly further than the corresponding provision in ACTA, which says that signatories "shall endeavor to promote cooperative efforts within the business community" to effectively address infringement. ACTA also included language to ensure that cooperation efforts take account of other considerations, such as "preserving legitimate competition and . . . preserving fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, fair process, and privacy." The U.S. TPP proposal lacks such balancing language.
There are important reasons why the role of intermediaries is a controversial topic. Requiring or pressuring Internet intermediaries to take on affirmative network-policing obligations would carry major implications for online speech, innovation, privacy, and the open character of the Internet. This is an area where TPP, and trade agreements in general, should tread very cautiously.
2010 CDT Policy Post on protections for online intermediaries
The leaked I.P. chapter draft text suggests that negotiators may be considering proposals that would require substantive changes to many signatories copyright laws – changes that relate to fundamental questions such as the scope and duration of copyright protection, not just enforcement.
In addition, the draft would prescribe DMCA-based commitments at a highly detailed level. In so doing, it arguably would leave little room for either non-U.S. signatories or U.S. lawmakers to learn from the U.S. experience and make reforms or modifications to the existing DMCA framework.
These are issues that warrant open scrutiny and discussion. There is a real danger that the backdoor of trade policy could be used to usher in legal and policy changes that overwhelmingly favor a narrow set of interests, such as rights holders, over other important interests and policy objectives – all while depriving the public of any input in the process.
As CDT noted before ACTA negotiators made a draft text public, copyright laws and policies affect a broad range of businesses and the public. This is particularly true in the online environment. For online businesses, for example, copyright policies can raise serious questions of liability exposure and have a major impact on innovation in digital technologies. For consumers, copyright policy is a significant factor in establishing the parameters of creativity and free expression, and copyright enforcement tactics can raise serious privacy and due process issues.
In short, the details of TPP's I.P. chapter may well raise issues of broad concern and impact – possibly much broader than negotiators or drafters may initially anticipate. There is no substitute for a process that allows for careful scrutiny and input by the full range of potentially interested parties, before settling on any particular language or approach.


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Advertising as a Leveraged Investment
"…sales increases of 50 percent to
100 percent are commonplace.
Often merely by changing the headline!"
by Michael Cooney
Have you ever thought of advertising as a leveraged investment? Once you do, you'll never look at your advertising budget in the same way again. In fact, advertising can give you the greatest financial leverage of any business investment. In this column, I'll show you why that's true, and how to leverage your advertising for greater sales.
First, take a look at any form of advertising you presently do. Newspaper ads, magazine ads, direct mail, TV commercials or radio spots -- whatever it may be. You're paying for space, time or postage, and the cost is basically fixed. You're paying the same amount whether you get five sales or fifty sales or five hundred sales.
The key to getting the greatest leverage for every marketing dollar, then, is to make certain that your advertising is so compelling and so focused that you increase its pulling power by 20 percent -- 50 percent -- 100 percent or more! All without spending one extra cent.
Now you may be asking yourself "Can I get my advertising to generate 20 percent to 100 percent more sales?" In fact, sales increases of 50 percent to 100 percent are commonplace. Often merely by changing the headline!
Now that's LEVERAGE! Because now you're making the same investment pay back far more profit. Just because your costs are fixed doesn't mean your results have to be.
Maximize your leverage
If you like that kind of leverage, you must remember one thing: the only way you can maximize it is through testing. Testing one headline against another. Or one body copy against another. Or basic proposition, or layout, or offer, or price. Only test one variable at a time, otherwise you won't know which element it was that gave you a different response rate. Carefully analyze the results from each test. Soon you'll see which produces the most customers, sales and profits.
If you're running the same ad over and over, now's the time to put this concept to the test. See if you can write several headlines that express your primary benefit in a more compelling manner. I typically write twenty to fifty headlines before deciding which to use. After all, if a reader isn't stopped in his tracks by your headline, why would he continue into the body of your ad? Most likely he won't.
With your new headline, run the ad to see how it compares with your old ad. Carefully track the results of both. Tally how many responded, and how many sales resulted. By the time you've tracked at least five or six different headlines, you'll usually discover that one stands far above the rest, and your response, or customer visits, or sales are greater than with previous ads. That winning ad becomes your new standard, or as we say, "control."
Sales are growing… now what?
From now on -- until the day you retire! -- your goal is to try to beat your control. Take it as a personal challenge and have fun with it. Start testing your body copy. Is it as convincing as it can be? Is it dripping with benefits? Does it speak to your prospects on a "human" level?
Next, move on to testing your offer, your guarantee, your call to action, and all the main variables in your ad. As you do, your sales will be growing, even though your advertising space or time costs remain the same. This is where it gets exciting!
One important note: To speed up your testing, you can compare two approaches at the same time. How? Just ask your publication or mailing house to run an A-B split for you. Many can and do. This simply means that as the newspapers, magazines or sales letters roll off the press, one will have ad A, the next ad B, the next ad A, and so on. This gives even distribution to both approaches, and results in a good test. Just make sure you have some way to tell which responses are from ad A, and which are from ad B.
Once you understand that advertising is a leveraged investment, and that testing is the way to maximize that leverage, you may start testing variables and never look back! After all, no one knows how high you can go. Through continued testing it is possible to double, triple, even quadruple your results. All without spending a dime more for space. Or, to look at it another way, you can cut your cost of sales in half, or better.
Don't delay. Start experimenting -- that's the only way to develop true winners! I hope you'll keep me informed of your successes.


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Furious Payback Racing MOD APK (Unlimited Gold/Money)
Furious Payback Racing MOD APK Download: It's not going to be easy though. Brian and the crew will find themselves in the middle of some of the most action-packed, explosive events in Furious history for Speed and No Limit of Underground Racing.
Table of Contents
Mod Info?
unlimited money
unlimited gold
Install Steps:
Furious Payback Racing MOD APK Download
Note: THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL FF GAME.
Furious Payback is sequel of Best Car games of 2106-2017.
Furious Payback has a single player campaign and real online racing that follows the exploits of former street racer Brian. After being double-crossed and forced into exile, it's time for Payback. Brian must rebuild the crew from Furious and Fast Team, win an impossible race and bring down The House, Jump and move fast to win and the cartel that has a grip over the city's casinos, Takedown criminals and cops. No need for limit speed.
Many Cars to drive in Fast & more Furious Payback Racing with different drive missions like, Street Race, Time Trial, Cop Smash, Car Deliver and most awaited Drag Races , Now for the fun part, where you turn it up a notch and take your stock ride into something spectacular. Visually customize your ride to get it looking just how you want, and your garage has never looked better. But deep down we know it's what's under the hood that counts; win and buy the hottest aftermarket parts and craft the perfect driving machine.
Double down on risk to run up your rewards. Nail speed and style moments to bank extra rep, and string together Heaters for massive multipliers. Push your limits to bank your winnings, or will you go bust? Up the ante with challenges that raise the stakes in races. Win the race and the challenge to multiply your bank. Get on the Tokyo Racing and use the nitro to drive as fast and as furious as you can in 15 super cars! Enjoy the advanced physics engine with incredible physics behavior and graphics.
Gameplay Types
– its Unique 1vs1 Racing Game with these Game Types
— Street Race
— Time Trial
— Cop Smash
— Car Delivery
— Drag Race
About Gameplay:
Drive Furious 9 Turbo Cars with extremely Fast and also Fate of the furious 8 Cars, beautiful cars on Exotic tracks. Start your career, win enough races and buy new cars to compete in more demanding races.
Start driving in unique cars – never seen before on the asphalt roads in reality and computer games.
Tune & Upgrade
Buy car parts (Top speed, Drag Race, Drift Race, acceleration and durability) and upgrade your car. Customize your auto and adjust to your driving style. Doesn't matter if you like high top speed or pure acceleration – you can modify your car and win races in your own style. Choose which car do do you prefer and buy the one from your dreams – respray the body, mount new engine, improve acceleration and nitro. Become the fastest driver in the city and earn respect from other teams. Show them who is the real car racer.
– Stunning 3D graphics
– Smooth and realistic car handling
– Different new cars to choose from: sport cars, roadsters, muscle cars!
– Detailed environment
– Rich types of NPC racers
– Basic customization through paint and other
– Street Race
– Time Trial
– Cop Smash
– Car Delivery
– Drag Racing
– One Tap Controls
– Be the Cop to Bust the Criminals
– Buy better cars to have better handling
Game will be updated on regular basis, new features, cars and tracks will be added regularly
Coming Soon:
– Realtime Multiplayer Races
– Car Series Challenges


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We thought it would be fun to start the year with a fabric giveaway, and it's easy to enter! Just check out the new look of MarcusFabrics.com, and leave a blog comment below telling us what you think of it. We'll choose a winner at random from all comments posted by next Wednesday, January 16, 2013! The lucky winner will receive a sampler pack from our FUN DAY IN THE JUNGLE collection by Studio 37!
(NOTE: Your comment will be visible upon admin approval)


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This numbered edition Acrylic Glass Print, designed by Mikhail Zhirnov, comes with a numbered and signed certificate of authenticity. Printed on archival-quality photo paper mounted on the back of a 1/8" thick, clear acrylic substrate, this artwork comes ready to hang on a wire attached to a wooden frame fixed on the back.
Ryazan, Russian Federation


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Gel Polish No. 45 CosmoLac Nail Fashion "Bed of roses"
Gel Polish 45 is a completely new gel polish that combines high quality, rich colors and affordable price.
gel polish has an excellent consistency, which allows you to well distribute the coating on the nails, and a comfortable, moderately soft brush provides easy uniform application.
The CosmoLac bottle is made in an original, stylish design, with a velvety lid that is pleasant to the touch. Gel Polish has a rich palette of dense shades, among which there are both romantic pastel and rich, mesmerizing colors that perfectly complement any feminine look.
Application technology:
- Prepare the nail plate.
We make a dry hardware Gel Polish manicure, giving the nails a better look.
To avoid unpleasant moments, go for natural nails at the end of the nail, making it matte.
This will help seal the free edge better.
We prepare the main part of the nail with a buff.
Movement in the direction from the cuticle to the free edge.
Degrease the nail plate.
For better adhesion, we process the nail plate with a primer (for problematic nails, it is better to use acidic, for strong without acidic).
The primer dries in air for about 30 seconds. - Gel Polish 45 apply Base Coat bonder over the entire surface of the nail without forgetting the free edge.
We dry in a lamp (in LED from 30 sec., In UV from 1.5 min depending on lamp power) without removing the sticky layer. - Apply color gel polish. At this stage, it is better not to be lazy and apply 2-3 thin layers. We dry each layer in a lamp (in LED from 30 sec, in UV from 1.5 min depending on the lamp power).
After drying each layer, we pass a buff making the coating matte and degreasing.
Only after that we proceed to the next layer. - At the final stage, apply the Top Coat topcoat.
Dry in a lamp (in LED from 30 sec, in UV from 1.5 min depending on lamp power).
After drying, remove the sticky layer.
We process the fingers with cuticle oil and run to show off to the girlfriends as you went to the giving salon.